Polymers for Drugs, Drug-Protein Conjugates, and Gene Delivery (original) (raw)

Highway to Success—Developing Advanced Polymer Therapeutics

Advanced Therapeutics

Polymer therapeutics are advancing as an important class of drugs. Polymers have already demonstrated their value in extending the half-life of proteins. They show great potential as delivery systems for improving the therapeutic index of drugs, via biophysical targeting and more recently with more precision targeting. They are also important for intracellular delivery of nucleic acid based drugs. The same frameworks that have been successfully applied to improve the small molecule drug development can be adopted. This approach together with improved pathophysiological disease knowledge and critical developability considerations, imperative given the size and complexity of polymer therapeutics, provides a structured framework that should improve their clinical translation and exploit their functionality and potential. Progress in understanding the right target, gaining the right tissue and cell exposure, ensuring the right safety, selecting the right patient population is discussed. The right commercial considerations are outlined and the need for a multidisciplinary approach is emphasized. Crucial developability factors together with scientific and technical advancements to enable pharmaceutical development of a quality robust product are addressed. It is argued that by applying this structured approach to their design and development, polymer therapeutics will continue to grow and develop as important next generation medicines.

Functional Polymers for Drug Delivery Systems in Nanomedicines

Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation, 2010

Polymeric based nanomedicines have been developed for diagnosing, treating, and preventing diseases in human body. The nanosized drug delivery systems having various structures such as micelles, nanogels, drug-conjugates, and polyplex were investigated for a great goal in pharmaceutics: increasing therapeutic efficacy for diseases and decreasing drug toxicity for normal tissues. The functional polymers used for constituting these drug delivery systems should have several favorable properties such as stimuli-responsibility and biodegrdability for controlled drug release, and solublization capacity for programmed drug encapsulation. This review discusses recent developments and trends of functional polymers (e.g., pH-sensitive polymers, biodegradable polymers, and cationic polymers) used for nanosized drug carriers.

Polymers and Biopolymers as Drug Delivery Systems in Nanomedicine

Recent Patents on Nanomedicinee, 2012

Nanomedicine addresses issues such as the use of nanotechnology, nanomaterials, and nanosensors for advanced medical applications, by utilizing the improved chemical, physical and biological properties of nanostructured materials. Polymers and biopolymers have been effectively used to formulate various types of nanoparticles such as micelles, liposomes, dendrimers, and hydrogels, which are mostly used as imaging and therapeutic agents. The demanding process of developing new biodegradable polymers mainly looks towards to synthesize copolymers to embed hydrophilic segments in the hydrophobic chains of the polymers, and in turn to create nanoparticles having unique delivery characteristics (i.e. specific targets and proper release rates). Such efforts are continuously disclosed in various patents either from drug industry or from academia. The present brief review is mainly focused on the previous types of polymeric nanoparticles as drug delivery systems and related current technologies of synthesis, along with recent patented disclosing methods of novel polymer architectures.

Polymers for Drug Delivery Systems

Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2010

Polymers have played an integral role in the advancement of drug delivery technology by providing controlled release of therapeutic agents in constant doses over long periods, cyclic dosage, and tunable release of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs. From early beginnings using off-the-shelf materials, the field has grown tremendously, driven in part by the innovations of chemical engineers. Modern advances in drug delivery are now predicated upon the rational design of polymers tailored for specific cargo and engineered to exert distinct biological functions. In this review, we highlight the fundamental drug delivery systems and their mathematical foundations and discuss the physiological barriers to drug delivery. We review the origins and applications of stimuli-responsive polymer systems and polymer therapeutics such as polymer-protein and polymer-drug conjugates. The latest developments in polymers capable of molecular recognition or directing intracellular delivery are surv...

Tailoring of Modern Polymer Based Deliverables: From Drug Delivery, Theranostics and Biomedical-A Review

SSR Institute of International Journal of Life Sciences, 2021

In the use of engineered polymers, the development of advanced drug delivery systems was carried out. The invention of smart polymers that can respond to changes such as temperature, pH or the atmosphere has led to advancement in polymer chemistry. Both potential answers are swelling/decadence. Medication targeting has been carried out using drug-polymer conjugates and drug-containing nano/microparticles. Many amphiphilic block copolymers, which are strengthened by interconnected groups to enhance the stabilisation of micellar drug carriers, as well as block copolymers containing ligands that will enable selective medication delivery in the future will be discussed. The second process for improving the performance of prescription carriers is the addition of auxiliary agents. In emerging fields such as molecular imagery and nanotechnology, evolved polymers and polymer architectures have also been established. This study focuses on advanced polymers used for both traditional and more modern applications of nanotechnology.

Therapeutic nanomedicine: Polymeric nanosystems for drug and gene delivery

European Journal of Nanomedicine, 2008

Therapeutic nanomedicine introduction Despite remarkable progress in the past century, acute and chronic diseases such as bacterial and viral infections, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and debilitating CNS diseases continue to take a significant toll around the world. Various types of drug and gene therapy strategies are currently employed for the treatment of diseases based on differences between the normal and pathological tissue. Those differences can be subtle and in remote areas of the body at the organ, tissue, cell, or sub-cellular levels (1-5). As pathological knowledge is leading to the molecular distinction between normal and abnormal tissue, it is predicted that more therapeutic targets will emerge at the cellular, sub-cellular, and at molecular levels (6). In the case of cancer, for instance, the angiogenic process that leads to recruitment of a blood supply from surrounding vessels is extremely important for growth and spreading of cancer cells, a process known as metastasis, to other parts of the body (7). Metastasis is the cause of more than 80% of cancer-related deaths (8). In addition, as the solid tumor begins to grow, the blood supply is confined largely to the periphery and does not permeate to the interior of the mass. Lack of blood supply to the core of a tumor results in

Polymeric pharmaceutical forms – the forms of the future

Scripta Scientifica Pharmaceutica

Polymers are gaining even more ground as carriers of therapeutic agents because of the potential to modify the properties of clinically proven medicines, which have limited use due to their shortcomings and side effects. Polymeric pharmaceutical systems are able to solve problems such as dose limitation of drug, poor water-solubility and duration of drug action. Polymer-pharmaceutical conjugates enable the improvement of drug localization in target tissue and also to optimize the drug release speed. Of great interest is the development of even cleverer and newer pharmaceutical forms made of polymers of varied reactivity, which allows for their binding with different biologically active substances.